As devices continue to move out of hospitals/doctors'
offices, what new technologies will further this movement? What are the
healthcare implications of this trend?

Migration of medical technology from clinical settings to the home and other
non-clinical environments may be prevalent in the areas of pain management,
diagnostic monitoring, and medication delivery. This trend has benefits in the
arena of cost control and freeing up medical professionals for higher-level
tasks. However, this transition also contains perils. Specifically, it has
healthcare implications in the realm of risk and risk management. The onus of
operating the technology safely, effectively, and in accord with intended use
falls increasingly on relatively untrained lay individuals. This may heighten
the possibility of errors, misuse, and adverse outcomes. In turn, this may
create a recipe for more product liability claims and lawsuits against medical
device manufacturers, with patients—and personal injury attorneys—alleging
defective design, failure to warn, and failure to adequately train intended
users. This underscores the need for risk management to anticipate and
safeguard technology manufacturers against such claims.

Christopher Matsuoka
Process Engineer, Crane Aerospace & Electronics

The human body is essentially one mysterious electronic black box. Unlike our
PCs, MP3s, or cell phones, we have yet to understand the full functionality of
the human body. Groundbreaking research is being made each day where electrical
stimulation may be used to treat autoimmune diseases, neuropathic pain, loss of
hearing, and vision loss, for example. As the number of available medical
devices on the market increases, the demand to manufacture less expensive and
smaller devices will continue to surge. Patients will be empowered with the
larger number of treatment options and a greater sense of personalized
healthcare.

Consequently, new technology has also been developed in
order to materialize the devices of tomorrow. Breakthroughs allowing
manufactures to print conductive circuitry on molded plastics, glass, or other
materials previously unavailable, for example, will continue to push the design
envelopes of future medical devices and will spur the growth of this rapidly
emerging technological field.

James Wilson
Senior, Continuum’s Advanced Systems Group

There’s a huge amount of growth in the “lab on a chip” concept, integrating
several laboratory functions on a single diagnostic chip. This is an approach
that has been talked about for several years. Many of the early efforts were by
start-ups that failed for various reasons to get the technology to market.
That’s beginning to change.

This miniaturization of technology is leading to greater
accessibility to medicine, especially in developing countries. At home, we’ll
feel the impact of this approach in the growth of retail walk-in clinics and
increases in self-administered diagnostics.

Adherence, however, is a serious implication, as care moves
outside the hospital/clinical setting, and along with it, the consistency of
environmental constraints and compliant patients.

While hospitalized patients are often accepting of the
restrictions that their care might place on them, patients who can be treated
outside of a hospital often don’t acquiesce to the impediments of a device or a
course of treatment. This can lead to poor adherence to treatment and high
patient and caregiver dissatisfaction.

Donna Sandfox
Product Manager, Omron Electronic Components LLC

Telehealth devices allow doctors to continue monitoring patients after
discharge (shortening hospital stays), and more medical therapies are being
conducted away from hospitals and clinics.

Omron is assisting manufacturers of home dialysis equipment
to integrate non-invasive blood pressure measurement to monitor patients during
the procedure. Implementing home dialysis allows patients to complete their
treatment on a more frequent and convenient basis (in some cases, while they
sleep) rather than visiting a clinic three days per week; in turn, they incur
much less stress to the body.

A truly exciting example of patients leaving the hospital to
resume an active life at home is the heart failure patients who have been
implanted with an artificial heart while waiting for a donor heart. The
improved circulation provided by the device helps their other organs grow
stronger during the wait.

The results for these at-home patients are better physical
and mental health, more freedom, and an overall improvement to their quality of
life. Home monitoring and treatment also lower overall healthcare costs. The
implication for device manufacturers is to ensure the user interface of the
equipment is simple enough to be operated by non-medical professionals.

With the increased patient-load pressure on hospital ERs as well as the rise in
serious illnesses, such as diabetes and cardiac disease, the trend toward designing
smarter medical devices that are used outside of a clinical environment has
become increasingly important.

More powerful and cost-effective microcontrollers play a
significant role in the current and future generations of portable and wearable
medical devices. On-chip integration of advanced connectivity, increased speed,
and lower power consumption, along with lower cost, are the key microcontroller
features that enable smarter medical devices. Such devices can detect,
diagnose, and treat conditions and diseases autonomously, without the
intervention of a doctor or medical staff member.

The current generation of automated external (cardiac)
defibrillators, or AEDs, is a good example of this trend. Now that smart AEDs
can be found in many public facilities, heart-attack sufferers have a much
better chance of survival and recovery. Modern AEDs not only instruct an
untrained user through the entire process, but also analyze the electrical
output from the patient’s heart and determine whether the electrical shock
should be delivered. Future medical devices will bring similar capability to
other conditions, making effective care more accessible.